


if i didn't know better, i'd think you were talking to me now

by fullmetallizard



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, I only picked T because I used the word moan lmao, M/M, brief mentions of connie jean mikasa and armin, character death but it isn't depicted, eruri - Freeform, i made myself really sad, this is canon verse but only nebulously so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29374440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullmetallizard/pseuds/fullmetallizard
Summary: “What are you thinking about?” Erwin asks quietly, his voice is low but Levi can feel the rumbling in his chest on his cheek. He hadn’t known he was awake.“Being human,” Levi answers, relishing the small kiss Erwin places on his hair.Erwin chuckles a bit. “Feeling contemplative tonight, are we?”
Relationships: Levi Ackerman/Erwin Smith
Comments: 14
Kudos: 91





	if i didn't know better, i'd think you were talking to me now

**Author's Note:**

> I very much do not own snk. I do feel owed pain and suffering from it though.

It’s cold out tonight but Erwin is warm beneath him.

War should not be the time for cuddling, for sweet-nothings whispered in your ear or moaned over your shoulder but ask any soldier and they will tell you that’s not the case. It’s not uncommon to find scouts coupled up in their sleeping bags together, hands clenched tight. So terrified, even in sleep, that their faces look more like the ones of frightened children. Connie asleep in Jean’s arms, the tears on his cheeks barely dry. Mikasa sleeping with a protective embrace around Armin, who trembles uncontrollably. No one comments on it but no one feels ashamed of it either.

When you spent most of your time dancing with your mortality, and the rest of it pushing away nightmares and trying desperately to keep a slippery grasp of whatever sense of righteousness you have left, feeling human in the most basic sense of the word is crucial to survive. What better way to achieve that than the solid form of another human?

Levi thinks the need to feel human, the thing that should be most inherit to being alive, was the catalyst to everything. It was that need that made people long to live as more than penned in beef cattle and made monsters who were once not monsters consume lives for the chance that they could have their own again. The human condition is humanity itself. 

“What are you thinking about?” Erwin asks quietly, his voice is low but Levi can feel the rumbling in his chest on his cheek. He hadn’t known he was awake.

“Being human,” Levi answers, relishing the small kiss Erwin places on his hair.

Erwin chuckles a bit. “Feeling contemplative tonight, are we?”

Levi doesn’t answer, just presses his face closer to him to hear his heart thudding in his chest. Erwin runs his fingers in feathery circles down Levi’s bare side. Levi wishes he could bottle this feeling and wear it around his neck.

“In another life, do you think we would be together?” Erwin asks after a few moments of silence. His circles continue but there’s tension in his voice, like the question was painful to get out. It hangs between them, heavy and full

“What do you mean?” Levi asks back. “Are you asking if this…if _we_ happened because of proximity? I thought we put that particular insecurity to bed half a decade ago.” His words are harsher than he meant them to be. He reaches up blindly to run his fingers along Erwin’s jaw to soften them.

“No,” Erwin sighs, a hint of frustration creeping in. His circles stop. “I mean…I don’t know. Do you think there’s another life out there? And we found each other in it?”

There’s a hint of… _something_ in his voice that Levi doesn’t quite understand. Distress? Desperation? “Like alternate universes?” He finally asks.

Erwin chuckles again, but his heart isn’t in this one, it’s hollow and throaty. “I guess so. That works. So?”

Levi lifts his head to look at him. His eyes are shut and if it weren’t so dim in here, Levi could have sworn Erwin was crying.

“I mean, sure. It’s all hypothetical, isn’t it?”

Erwin sighs so Levi tries again.

“Yes, to your question. There’s no universe or dimension where I don’t love you,” he admits, feeling his cheeks warm. “Maybe in that other place we just live normal lives. A cat, a tomato garden, knitting doilies, all of that.”

Erwin has a genuine laugh for this and it lightens the air around them a bit. “The idea of knitting doilies is normal to you?” He asks, cheeks firm and rosy from smiling. He sounds like himself, the Erwin he saves just for him and Levi has never grown tired of it.

Levi lays his head back down, ruminating on this. “I think I’d like to see you knitting. Old and grey, as they say.”

Hush falls back over them. They won’t go old and grey. They know this. They knew that was the only realistic outcome once they’d put their uniforms on and decided to keep wearing them. Levi is far from afraid of the thought of death and half the time is amazed he has made it to as old as he has. Once the idea of aging had frightened him but now, he marveled at the faintest of crow’s feet developing beside his eyes. He found a silvery hair once and plucked it out to stare at it, filled with disbelief and melancholy. Age was not the ticking time bomb he imagined it to be when he was young. It marches, a testament to close calls and the losses he lived through.

“I like to think we’ll find each other again,” Erwin says. His tone makes it sound like a confession.

“I’m right here,” Levi answers.

Erwin hums an affirmative “mhm.”

“Hey, Erwin?” He asks, feeling sleepy again.

“Yes?”

“Do you think I’m tall in our other lives?”

The laugh that breaks out of Erwin is louder than he thought it would be. And sweeter.

“I quite like your height,” Erwin says after he’s caught his breath. He pulls Levi closer.

“It has its advantages, I guess,” Levi concedes, planting a kiss on the base of is neck, feeling compelled to linger there, feeling Erwin’s pulse under his lips.

“I like to think we’re going to find each other again,” Erwin says again.

“Why do you keep saying that? We’re both here right now.”

An unspeakable sadness fogs over Erwin’s features and all at once Levi knows something isn’t right. He closes his eyes. Something is off, something has slipped his mind but as much as he reaches around in the corners of his brain for it, everything falls away, slick and oily. As if his very mind was coated in ink.

“Lee,” Erwin sighs sadly.

Levi ignores him and sits up, unable to shake the wrongness from his bones.

When he opens his eyes again, the light is different and his body is sore. And Levi starts to remember.

He leans forward, holding his face in his hands, damning the universe, damning this dimension, wishing he could go ahead and damn himself all the while knowing he can’t.

It’s cold out tonight.

And Erwin is gone.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading, it means a lot to me!


End file.
